By Sue Wuetcher

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man" -- two
legendary film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett novels -- will be
among the highlights of the Fall 2002 edition of "Buffalo Film
Seminars: Conversations About Great Films with Diane Christian and
Bruce Jackson."

The 15-week series of screenings and discussions will be
sponsored by the University at Buffalo and the Market Arcade Film
and Arts Center. Screenings will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesdays in
the Market Arcade theater, 639 Main St.

Each film will be introduced by Christian, SUNY Distinguished
Teaching Professor in the Department of English in the UB College
of Arts and Sciences, and Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and
Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture, also in UB's English
department.

Following a short break at the end of each film, Christian and
Jackson will lead a discussion of the film with members of the
audience.

The screenings are part of "Contemporary Cinema" (Eng. 441), a
UB undergraduate course being taught by the pair. The screenings
also are open to the general public.

Admission to each film will be $7 for the general public, $5 for
senior citizens and$4.50 for students. Series tickets are available
at a 15 percent discount.

The films are free for those enrolled in the three-credit
"Contemporary Cinema" course. Those wishing to earn credit in
relation to the series should register for the course.

Free monitored parking will be available in the M&T lot
opposite the theater's Washington Street entrance.

At UB, the film seminars are sponsored by the Capen Chair in
American Culture, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the
Department of English.

o Aug. 27: "Sunrise," 1927, directed by F.W. Murnau. Starring
George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, this film won
three Academy Awards the first time they were given out. It shared
best picture with "Wings," Gaynor received the first best actress
award, and Charles Rosher got the first best cinematography. The
themes are betrayal and redemption, and guilt and innocence, with
love triumphant. Selected for the National Film Registryin 1989.
This screening will be accompanied on electronic piano by Philip
Carli.

o Sept. 3: "M," 1931, directed by Fritz Lang. The first
serial-murderer film, this movie made Peter Lorre one of filmdom's
great psychopaths. It also was one of the first films that
expressed the evil that would soon dominate Germany.

o Sept. 10: "The Thin Man," 1934, directed by W. S. Van Dyke.
William Powell and Myrna Loy star as Nick and Nora Charles in the
first and best of the six films based on Dashiell Hammett's 1923
novel. It features sophisticated characters, great dialog, enough
martinis to pickle the finest liver, gorgeous sets by Cedric
Gibbons, great cinematography by James Wong Howe, and timely woofs
from Asta, the dog that has figured in more crossword puzzles than
any other animal. Selected for the National Film Registry in
1997.

o Sept. 24: "The Rules of the Game," 1939, directed by Jean
Renoir. Renoir's most celebrated film, this satire on the French
class structure is so good that the film was banned in France until
1956. In the U.S., films were banned because they were too sexy; in
France, they were banned because their ideas about society were too
accurate.

o Oct. 1: "The Maltese Falcon," 1941, directed by John Huston.
Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and
Elisha Cook star in Huston's first film, a great adaptation of
Dashiell Hammett's novel. This film also has been called the first
film noir. Selected for the National Film Registry in 1989.

o Oct. 8: "Open City," 1945, directed by Roberto Rossellini.
Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani star in this seminal work of Italian
neo-realism, written by Rossellini, Federico Fellini and Sergio
Amidei. Awarded the Grand Prize at the 1946 Cannes film
festival.

o Oct. 15: "The Third Man," 1949, directed by Carol Reed. Joseph
Cotten, Ailida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, a zither and
Robert Krasker's Oscar-winning cinematography star in this classic,
written by Graham Greene, Alexander Korda, Carol Reed and Orson
Welles. Producer David O. Selznick wanted to cast Noel Coward in
the role that Welles got-Harry Lime-which, among other things,
would have deprived the film of its most memorable speech.
Sometimes directors win out, as Reed did in that battle. Received
the Grand Prize at Cannes.

heartbreaking, perceptive investigation into the tensions with
the generations of a family.... One of the finest films of Ozu's
last decade, it was the one that belatedly made his reputation in
the West," wrote critic Henry Holt.

o Oct. 29: "Black Orpheus," 1958, directed by Marcel Camus.
Based on the Orpheus-Euridice legend, but updated and set in
Carnival in Rio de Janiero, this film won the Oscar for "Best
Foreign Film," as well as the "Golden Palm" at Cannes. It features
a great score by Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto that
put the bossa nova into the musical mainstream and had a profound
influence on American jazz.

o Nov. 5: "Belle de Jour," 1967, directed by Luis Buñuel.
Catherine Deneuve is featured in one of the three truly great
erotic films. So what did the Japanese client have in that box?

o Nov. 12: "Faces," 1968, directed by John Cassavetes. The only
film about marriage in distress that comes close to this for
cinematic power is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), which
is made in a cinematic style so different from "Faces" that it is
difficult to imagine they were made in the same country and only
two years apart. Cassavetes was constantly improvising, getting his
actors-John Marley and Gena Rowlands-to improvise, creating the
specifics of the story as they moved through it. He was one of the
great innovators in American film.

o Nov. 19: "The Wild Bunch," 1969, directed by Sam Peckinpah.
William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Robert Ryan, Edmund
O'Brian, Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones star in a film that
contains what critic Roger Ebert calls "one of the great defining
moments in modern movies." That moment makes a good deal more sense
in this 1995 restoration, which is 10 minutes longer than the
original.

o Nov. 26: "Day for Night," 1973, directed by François
Truffaut. Truffaut was one of the founders of the French New Wave,
and this film is his love-poem to the movies. Jacqueline Bisset,
Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Truffaut himself
star. Not only is it a good story, but you get to find out how they
get the snow to do exactly what it's supposed to do, what's under
the second-floor balcony and how they do all that filming in the
dark of night.

o Dec. 3: "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," 1975, directed by
Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. If you know the Pythons, then no
words are necessary here; if you don't, words will not suffice. In
no other film will you learn all you need to know about The Holy
Hand Grenade of Antioch or see a cow used as a defensive
weapon.